Wait.... is that ANOTHER GRPD random thread?!?

Man...finally got back to Gradeful Dead. Was having a lot of fun with my Wyrmling mulching through level 3 when I opened up the Monster Zoo. Thought I was all that with a pair of Squid Bolts until I realized I had no crossbow. Ran in with Obvious Fireball and a quintet of Poison Flasks, but it turned out to be a double-sized zoo. I ran out of mana, ran out of consumables, and then died to a 17-Octo blaze of spellcasting that I couldn't managed to get away from even with six consecutive Froda's.

Well Sophie VI died on DL 11 to a named Royal Bee, pretty bad mistake too. I'm disappointed, was confident could beat dredmor with the build. Tried to mind control the named monster and got killed, could have easily just teleported to safety then tried or just kill from afar.

I had bought and kronged up a Clockwork Rail Launcher, with the damage from Astrology buffs, tinkering and wand lore skills it was doing pretty decent damage. If I wasn't shooting stuff with that most things died from a nerve staple followed by being lit on fire. Psionics was definitely the key to the build, or atleast did the most work for me. Although on later DLs it started taking quite a few hits to kill stuff.

Astrology stars aligned took care of all the monster zoos, close the door and just use it through the wall. A bit time consuming but it took care of zoos safely.

I never touched Dagger or Pirate levels, I died with everything else maxed out though.

No warrior levels at all though, so I had no real desire to get AA or defensive stats, I was never in melee range anyways for the most part. But ended up being my downfall taking 48 from a hit.

After much debate, I decided to roll with the first set -- just a solid warrior beaster with some interesting stuff thrown in via CK and Communism. So far, so good -- though I just opened the Monster Zoo on floor 2 and once again, I have 2 squid bolts and no crossbow. This time, though, I closed it and walked away. I hope to find that crossbow before I have to deal with the zoo.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I'm playing with the new alpha weapon skills and, obviously, alpha Deadshot in the mix. And I fixed my copy of Vampirism as per Loren's bug report.

So..... Golemancy no matter what. I think I'll take the first roll for a more gishy build with Ley Lines. Getting Necro resist to make it viable could be a bit tricky with this skill set, so here's hoping I can make it past the first floor.

I completely failed to take screenshots of this, and I'm almost tempted to ignore it and keep playing 4 more characters, but that would be cheating.

2ManyGenres the Adventurer
46888
from a spell mine

Click to expand...

2ManyGenres was a Axes, Throwing, Shield Bearer, Deadshot, Vampirism, Clockwork Knight, Communism that was a royal freaking badass and literally waltzed his way through the Floor 2 Monster Zoo with Y-Axis Strike and long-distance muting due to Deadshot and massive supplies of softballs. I thought I was in caketown mode. Then, suddenly, a nasty purple cloud appeared around me from nowhere after I had just collected the Monster Zoo prize. WTF?

I start to move around, unsure of what the enemy was. More purple clouds. Health depleting fast. Socialist Healthcare. Potion of Lively Regeneration. Potion of Healing. Finally I end up right next to a Great Pumpkinn, who hits me for 50% of my remaining life. Guerrilla Attack. Potion of Healing. Back away. Crap, now I can't see him again. 2 more purple clouds later, and I'm out.

"Next random roll" (code name: Alkahistory) is working marvellously for a reason I never expected. Staves' Spirit Conduit inflicts a two-turn -50 debuff, which works perfectly with Tourist's Camera to stun the snot out of whatever's in front of me. I popped a Dwarven Express Post in floor 2 and me and my Mustache Golem took out three named out-of-depth monsters in a row by using that trick to keep them perma-stunned. That was worth an entire character level all by itself.

Alkahistory progressing slowly due to no time to play, but I had to share this tidbit: I opened the 2nd floor Monster Zoo and just about died like three times in a row. My Mustache Golem was getting rocked, and Spirit Conduit+Stun doesn't work on hordes. Fortuantely, there was a teleporter to a small closed room right outside the zoo door, so I did some +speed walking around to regain HP/MP and basically danced the first half of the zoo away. Then I accidentally used Barometric Pulse to knock the damn teleporter into the crowd of monsters. I had no potions left, just ground meat and cheese (no Ingot Press yet), and was about to die a horrible death when...level up!!

I got the Mortal Machine, and that sonofabitch soloed the second half of the monster zoo without breaking a sweat.

I haven't played much lately, but this seems like a good enough excuse to get back into the game.

OK, first attempt. On my second roll, I got the following, which I'll stick with:

Pole Arms

Dual Wield

Artful Dodger

Fleshsmithing

Ley Walker

Demonologist

Communist

OK, I should have had a practice game before I tried this (to get back into the swing of things). Talk about newbie mistakes -- I had dual wield, AND communist and I forgot. I got into trouble real early and should have been dual wielding my newbie pole arm with one of the communist weapons. Oh well:

My second try (hopefully, I'll do better).
Bad luck this time, after my fifth roll(!!!) I have the following:

Axe

Master of Arms

Necronomiconomics

Alchemy

Emomancy

Battle Geology

Egyptian Magic

Well I have a half of a decent character here, at least. Let's see if I can get a bit further this time.

/edit So far so good -- about a third or so into level 2, but I need to take a break. I don't know how far this will get me. (we'll see). With luck I think I could go pretty far with it (or not lol).

/Edit again: Still going strong 2/3rds through level 3. I did start to go against my intuition and put a point into Necro (once my gear got my resist up to 3). Also put a point into Emomancy for My Chemical Explosion. While both skills are fine, I do run out of mana quickly using them so they cannot be staples. I'm considering putting a couple of points into alchemy to stock up on potions of invisibility, mana, and of course, healing (alcohol is not as all-powerful a mage-fuel as it used to be due to the various negative effects).

Saw this, felt like starting up Dredmor again, so I did and rolled this guy:

-Axes
-Maces
-Golemancy
-Astrology
-Burglary
-Alchemy
-Archaeology

Seems like a fairly decent build. I'll let mustaches kill all teh things!!!!!11!!!2 while I level up Astrology, Alchemy, Golemancy, Burglary, and Archaeology. Specifically, I think i'll max Astrology, pick up Distiller from Alchemy (for 2x the potions), up to either Unliving Wall or Thaumites in Golemancy (i'm not sure which, i've never used thaumites before), Lucky Pick in Burglary, and It Belongs in a Museum for Archaeology.

I'm nearly finished with Floor 1, and I have all the little levels in everything I need. Time for Golemancy and Astrology levels. Looks like this guy will be a goodish gish.

Emomancy is not a skill that I know very well (never have put more than a single point into it). Heck, whenever I've tried to ask a youngster what Emo meant, I either get an explanation that's even more confusing than the word, or I get confused looks from them like I'm not quite sure which one of us is the idiot in the conversation. I think it's them but I'm equally sure they think it's me. So I've stopped asking.

But back on topic, Isn't emomancy supposed to be a mana hog? And without any source of mana (other than potions) it doesn't seem like a good investment. And Egyptian Magic, which I do know well, can be pretty expensive as well. In that situation, I'm kind of forced to go the melee route since 90% of my fights are going to end up toe to toe due to that limitation. Which means -- melee gear, which means low magic power. Don't get me wrong, they aren't bad to soften up zoos, but neither one is going to be a staple without mana regen. Without beefing up the melee side of things first, I may not survive long enough to get it powered up.

I haven't played much in a while, so I'm certainly a bit rusty. But that's what my instincts are telling me. A mage without mana is like a gun without bullets.

Here's the deal: Emomancy isn't that bad of a mana hog as long as it's not your main offense. The Cure will save your butt, and you can unleash My Chemical Explosion at hordes and zoos, but by and large the only thing you really care about is Mark of the Black Eyeliner, which gives you 2 . That's enough for you to use Necropotence up to a magic power of 19 without hurting yourself -- so you actually don't want your magic power up that high. Look for an Ankh Amulet to help that out a lot.

You'll be using Necro for Mark of Cththon and Pact of Fleeting Life, which together with Black Eyeliner turn you into a vampiric-healing melee machine. The Mark means you proc Nightmare, which is badass. With Battle Geology to give you Daze, you'll be able to take on big-time named mobs fair and square, and between Quake and Chemical Explosion, your ability to tackle hordes won't suck until the lower floors, either, by which time you should have Axenado and Philosopher of the Axe, meaning massive AoE activated attacks.

You're right about the Egyptian Magic, though -- you'd basically want to level it up to Ra and then only activate it for zoos and Dredmor, where the massive amounts of nasty when-hit and on-hit procs will really matter.

That's just my style, though. I'm sure there are other ways to play that out.

Alkahistory just took out a double-zoo on floor 4. One of the first monsters was a Samurai-Bot that give me a Katana, which I paired up with an artifact Bee Keeping tome to hit for 20+ damage as a mostly-mage. It turns out that Thaumites stack nicely, so while my robot stood in the middle of the door and absorbed punishment like a Clevelander, I used Bee Culture to pile such huge stacks of Thaumites on either side of it that by the time the zoo was cleared of non-chicken monsters, they literally just stepped next to my Robo and died horribly of stacks and stacks of 8. Then my Robo went after the Chickens and died over and over again until I got smart and sniped the Witchies who were keeping Pumpkins alive.

Repeat until keypressed on the second part of the zoo, which was mercifully only one room away from the first part. Prize was a pissant artifact ring with 5 1, which both of my current rings blow out of the water.

Next level will be Alchemical Canister, which will be nice primarily because I want my 3rd point of alchemy so I can process my Merlot into whatever the hell it turns into so that I can turn that into Aqua Vitae.